Visual reflection: Space without a name

As artistic response to the lecture-performance Space without a name – vulnerable position and systems by Repair artist and researcher Ana Kuzmanić, young designer and illustrator Klara Rusan Klarxy made an illustration.

Through the lecture-performance, Kuzmanić shared her experience of living with dislexia, focusing on dealing with various pressures dictated by educational and cultural systems. In addition to the illustration, Klara also prepared an artist statement encapsulating her creative process:

While listening to and later reading Ana Kuzmanić’s text, the image of her as a sickly child etched itself into my mind – a child observing the poster of the Firebird that hung across from her parents’ bed, where she lay. As she studied the arrows on the Firebird’s body, she felt as though she was pushing her fever down towards her feet. Often sick, she would miss out on children’s games but spent a lot of time reading. She deconstructed and reconstructed stories as she pleased, creating in her world of imagination.

I chose this moment in the text because I felt a profound connection to the art that followed her like a shadow and later emerged as her main life pursuit, intertwined with the writing and reading that shaped her but also stood as obstacles both before and after her diagnosis of dyslexia. This moment struck me as a strong visual introduction, a foreshadowing of everything to come. (At least, that’s how I experienced it.)

The vision of her in the pose of the Firebird, lying in bed, covered with arrows pushing the fever downward, came vividly to me first in my mind’s eye and then onto paper. I decided to infuse the Firebird motif into her situation. She is in the bird’s pose; the crumpled red bedding becomes its tail; the carpet transforms into green grass blades surrounding the bird, while rays of sunlight piercing through add to the struggle she endures.